As the world turns in nauseated disbelief at the atrocities committed by government forces in Syria, what is passing largely unnoticed is another military campaign that warrants equal disbelief — this one in Yemen, where escalating strikes by unmanned drones targeting operatives of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have resulted, in addition to killing suspected terrorists, in the death of a great many civilians. All of which has generated sympathy for the group and palpable anger at the US — clearly an unintended consequence.
In recent days, several reports in the American media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, as well as an hour-long episode on Frontline, have triggered a lot of interest in the public debate over the issue of whether the current administration's drone policy in Yemen is, in the long run, harming American interests. To be sure, the US has good reason to be concerned about AQAP. The group, formed in January 2009, has orchestrated high-profile attacks, mostly foiled, aimed at the American heartland. That same year, its operatives attempted to bomb a US airliner headed to Detroit (a plot that would have resulted, had it achieved its goal, in the death of well over a hundred passengers) and to send parcel bombs via cargo planes to Chicago in 2010. Last month, Saudi intelligence agents helped uncover an AQAP attempt to plant a suicide bomber on a US-bound plane. And there is no question, experts agree, that the militant group has grown in number, reach and determination.
Certainly its suicide bombing last week in the heart of the Yemeni capital, that killed more than 100 soldiers at a military parade rehearsal, would attest to that. It controls towns in the southern Abyan provinces, and has effectively transformed itself from a regional threat to Al-Qaeda's most active affiliate outside Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was in 2009, shortly after AQAP's inception, that President Obama is first known to have authorized the drone strikes in Yemen. For the American administration, however, the campaign has not only backfired but created a backlash among the Yemeni people. Though the US has repeatedly claimed that its missile strikes have killed only terrorists, it is now evident that civilians have also fallen victim, which has angered powerful tribes in the region. Anger was muted, for example, after Anwar Al-Awlaki, the American-born senior AQAP leader, was killed in September by a strike, but when his teenage son, Abdulrahman, was also killed in another strike a month later, there was an outpouring of grief not just across the Awlaki tribal area, but across Yemen.
The outrage that tribal leaders felt at the US led many members of the clan not only to join the militants but to provide them with safe haven in the areas they controlled. Drone strikes have also been known, in addition to killing civilians, to have destroyed farms, homes and public buildings. And what Yemeni is likely to forget — or not to evince rage at — the cruise missile strike in Al-Majali tribal region in December 2009 that killed dozens, including 21 children and 14 women? It is no wonder that the area, a remote tribal region, is now a haven for militants, who appear to have become energized, not debilitated, by these strikes. Hence, when a nameless AQAP footsoldier, interviewed in the Frontline episode last Tuesday, said "We're at war with America," the sentiment hit a chord with ordinary Yemenis. Even those among them, from cities far from the militant training fronts targeted by drones, who had not in the past taken issue with US strikes that killed known terrorists, now have an image of trigger-happy American military personnel, sitting around computers, coldly directing unmanned aircraft to go on the rampage, killing Yemenis and ravaging their tribal lands.
Beyond a doubt, the drone program in Yemen, which at any rate remains shrouded in secrecy, has failed dismally to win hearts and minds in Yemen but instead succeeded mightily in alienating a large segment of the Yemeni people against the US.
If the strikes have created such a backlash, why then, you ask, has Washington accelerated their use? Let's remember here that the US is a big power, and like all big powers in history, from Imperial Rome to Colonial Britain, it feels free to swing its big ego around. After all, its colossal reach is backed by a $15 trillion economy (25 percent of global GDP) and a defense budget of $711 billion (43 percent of global military spending).
And, oops, lest we forget, President Obama will go to extremes in Yemen, regardless of the cost or the consequence, to make sure that some loony-tunes militant from AQAP, carrying a bomb in his underwear, does not pull a fast one on the US any time real soon — not in an election year, please.
